Medication in solid form such as tablets, pills, capsules or the like are sometimes dispensed to patients in dispensers having individually sealed compartments or blisters designed to hold a single dose of medication. Such packages permit the handling of only a single dose of medicine at a time, insure patient compliance, and minimize the risk of contamination of the tablet, pill or capsule.
These "blister packs" typically have first and second cardboard layers with a plurality of oversize aligned cutout through each layer. Typically, a cover portion of plastic having a plurality of blisters is placed against and laminated to the first cardboard layer with the blisters extending through the cutouts in that layer, and pills or capsules are placed within the blisters. A layer of foil is typically laminated to the second cardboard layer, and a peel-off backing is then removed from the foil to expose an adhesive surface upon the foil. The adhesive surface is typically then used to bond the first and second cardboard layers into a sandwich, thereby entrapping the pills within the blisters and creating the sealed unit dose pill package. A heated glue or melting techniques may also be used to seal the package.
Since these packages contain opening manipulations which would thwart opening by small children, they are also particularly useful in the field of child resistant strip packaging. The "blister packs" are typically used both by pharmaceutical companies which manufacture the drugs and package them in blister packs, and by smaller health care facilities which use the blister packs for packaging individual doses. These "blister packs" are also manufactured by companies in the business of providing unfilled blister packs for filling by third parties.